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Why just making batteries is not enough for UK’s car supply chain

The UK “does not have abundant reserves” the Faraday Institute, a government-funded battery promotion body, told MPs last year, but lithium is one area we could exploit. Two producers, British Lithium and Cornish Lithium, are busy trying to turn a vast area of ​​lithium-rich granite in south-west England into usable material for battery makers. A Tesla-sized EV contains about 40-50kg of lithium in its battery and we need around 70,000 tonnes by 2035 to feed our battery plants, Jeremy Wrathall, founder and CEO of Cornish Lithium believes. Of that, Cornish Lithium hopes to upply around 5000-10,000 tonnes annually, enough for 100,000-200,000 EVs, with British Lithium aiming at around 20,000 tonnes annually.

“If we rely on China, where most of the lithium is produced, that’s not a good position to be in,” Wrathall said.

“There’s a huge amount of lithium in Cornwall,” Wrathall said, before cautioning that while the granite mass lying from the Scilly Isles to Dartmoor might contain billions of tonnes, that doesn’t mean it’s all economically viable to extract it.

Rising prices will help. Lithium carbonate prices leapt by 420% between January 2021 and January 2022 to a truly dizzying $50,000 per ton, according to S&P Global Platt’s. “What that’s showing is there’s a shortage of supply,” Wrathall said. Also that everyone’s rushing to secure that supply ahead of a wholesale shift out of internal combustion engines. “It’s almost as if you’re Bronze Age man trying to work out what the price of copper is,” he said.

The company would refine the lithium into battery-friendly carbonate or hydroxide itself, capturing another slice of the battery value chain. Cornish Lithium hopes to start supplying cathode makers in 2025/26 “with an extremely fair wind”, Wrathall said.

Right now, that cathode maker would be outside the UK. “For the next stage, what we definitely need in the UK is a cathode manufacturing plant,” Wrathall said.

The UK can supply a few other pieces of the cell-making jigsaw. Phillips 66 makes needle coke, on an element of the anode side of the battery, at its Humber Refinery. The fact that it’s a byproduct from petroleum refining suggests this is perhaps not a permanent solution.

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